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By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
RIVERSIDE
Moving at less than a snail's pace - and deliberately so - riggers lifted the fallen Rancocas Creek railroad bridge back into an upright position Friday.
The process began before noon under bright blue skies and ended around 11 p.m. under floodlights that starkly illumined the bright blue bridge against the night sky.
An American flag, a good luck symbol for construction workers, flew proudly atop the bridge along with a blue banner of Camden's Ironworkers Local 399.
By 1 p.m., a crowd of more than 50 spectators had gathered on the Delanco side of the creek to observe the salvage feat.
The operation was timed to coincide with the rising tide, spanning about six hours from the afternoon into the evening.
It was not until after 5 p.m. that six giant winches, three on each side of the creek, roared into action, pulled their cables taut and began lifting the bridge.
At first, the movement was imperceptible.
"We're moving it in increments of three or four degrees," said Walter Walker Kimball, project director of the South Jersey light-rail line for the South Jersey Rail Group, the consortium of contractors building the 34-mile line from Camden to Trenton. "We want to be very cautious."
While winches on the Delanco side pulled the top of the bridge north, winches on the Riverside bank pulled the bottom of the bridge south.
This produced a rotation that brought the bridge upright without allowing it to shift further out into the creek and crash into an adjacent pier.
"We'll be lifting the bridge in approximately 14 stages of three to five degrees each," said Marcus Vitiello, a spokesman for the rail group.
"The buoyancy of the water from the tide will help pick the barge up on one side while ballast will push the other side down," he explained. "Once the bridge starts to move over, the restraining cables (cables attached to the top of the bridge from the Riverside bank) will come into play."
Now that the bridge is upright, the next step will be to attach two pontoons on the south side to go with the two already in place on the north side. The South Jersey Rail Group hopes to float it into position and lower it onto waiting piers Monday.
The bridge, under construction on a barge, was 24 hours away from being floated into position when on April 5, it listed and fell over, sending five workers diving for safety. None was seriously hurt.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident, which South Jersey Rail Group officials have attributed to faulty design on the part of the subcontractor erecting the bridge, Archer Steel Co. of Hightstown.
Freight rail service across the creek was scheduled to resume July 1. Rail officials declined to estimate when it might resume, pending a full inspection of the bridge.
NJ Transit spokesman Charles Ingoglia said it was too early to say if the accident will delay the opening of the rail line, scheduled for Jan. 1, 2003. But, he emphasized, the accident will cost taxpayers nothing.
The expenses resulting from it will be borne by the contractors and their insurers, he said.